


Sussex

by TheVeryLastValkyrie



Series: And They Fell Like Dominoes [10]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4019713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeryLastValkyrie/pseuds/TheVeryLastValkyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of a filthy rich boy and a clever dick girl at one of the world's most prestigious universities; of cheap wine and red plush; of betrayal, and bad blood, and her reading glasses. This time, they're going to be the death of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sussex

**Author's Note:**

> Migrated from my Tumblr. Here be F words, and a lot of other words besides.

She liked to shoot things. It was one of the things about her he didn’t like that he liked, or loved that he loved (though there’s precious little he loves about loving her these days). They’re so much older now (give or take a graduation ceremony, and an engagement party, and being twenty-five on a good day), and thusly should be so much wiser. He shouldn’t be dry-mouthed as she takes off earphones, takes out earplugs, unzips her jacket and fluffs out her hair. He shouldn’t feel cold, wrapped as he is in his own dark woollen coat. He shouldn’t feel anything as he stands there, watching her dismember the rifle with her hands instead of her teeth. Time is irrefutable, and so is the diamond on her finger.

“It was my duty to take him in.”

And so he says so loudly enough for her to hear.

Annie doesn’t pick up the gun. She doesn’t need it. She has hot, black crude oil blood burning through her, set alight by the loss of her dreams. She has Saturday afternoon at a country club in Sussex, a club that doesn’t feel a need to watch its clientele murder clay pigeons in sprays of bright powder. She has the diamond on her finger, and it cuts his face when she hits him – left hand, right hand, just the way she did the first time (when she hit him for their first time, when she didn’t hate to love him).

“And you took no pleasure in it, I’m sure,” she says calmly, his blood wet on her ring.

Ollie takes such pleasure in seeing her, in the way his cheekbone clangs, in recalling all of her, see-through blouses, short skirts, how cheap (how real) she seemed, tasting real and salty in a world running red with fifty pound notes. He kept her knickers, and she wore her broken heart like a crown. They took no pleasure from how ruined they were.

“Would you rather have married a criminal?”

“At least he doesn’t pretend to be a good man.” She steps on his foot, hard. She presses down, uses _him_ to get _her_ the extra height _she_ needs to look _him_ in the eye. “At least he doesn’t pretend the way you do, pretend this is anything more than knowing each other too well for too long. It was uni, Ollie. It was a long time ago.”

“Five years, give or take.”

“Grow up, Olivier.”

“Annie,” he says, if only to say it aloud. “Annabelle.”

He forces the truth on her with his cheek against hers; she shudders all down the length of her spine, and his cheekbone still clangs (and it’s a low, dirty trick, to remind her how he smells, that he would rub himself all over her like a low, dirty cat if she would only lean into him). He wants to lick the line on her throat clean, lick Ollie off Annie, but that’s not bloody likely, is it?


End file.
